WNBC held an NYC Blogger Summit last night, attempting an erasing of the division between the broadcaster and the blogger.
The event brought together around 100 bloggers of all stripes from political bloggers (Urban Elephants, NYPress) to Brooklyn bloggers (Gowanus Lounge, OnlyTheBlogKnowsBrooklyn) to a blogger offering material about pop culture and his cat.
Our industry is changing, and you are a huge part of that, said Erin Monteiro, who will act as WNBCs new liaison between the blogosphere and the network. Bloggers have expanded the media universe.
While the newsroom at WNBC keeps tabs on a handful of blogs to stay current with breaking news and opinions, they now want to make this relationship more formal. Much of the event was geared towards encouraging bloggers to offer stories to WNBC. If they are used for broadcast, credit would be awarded on air, as well as in other ways – such as some link-love on the WNBC Web site.
But some of the bloggers were skeptical. The major blogs already do that. Why should we look to you? said the blogger known as Fish Bowl.
In response, Sree Sreenivasan, WNBC’s technology reporter and the events moderator, expressed hope that WNBC will be added to that list. (Sreenivasan, who is also the dean of students at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism offers a page on WNBC that could be called Blogging 101)
And we have some of the older people, a new readership, added another NBC-er.
As an example of the importance of blogs in the newsgathering process, Phil OBrien, executive producer at WNBC, talked about looking to Gothamist to see if they had information on a recent gorilla ad campaign that caused a stir in Boston.
But it seems that WNBC has its work cut out for them: A survey they distributed in anticipation of the event showed that none of those surveyed found local television Web sites helpful for their blogs, and only three percent considered local television helpful.
So how could local broadcasters improve on that? Lyceum noted that since Much of your content doesnt have much value ten minutes after it airs, you could release it, so that bloggers could utilize the content.
Were working on that, Monteiro said.
By Mike Muller on February 1, 2007, 8:48 am
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